Bad options, part 3

In my last two long threads on the Gaza war, I discussed two terrible options for the end of this conflict. The first was a return to the status quo ante and the second was a return to Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip in any way shape or form.

To my great regret, this second point demands repetition as more Israeli actors have been proposing versions of this. For one, there have been strident calls from particularly extreme members of the current Israeli government to expel, in whole or in part, Palestinians to Sinai.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that these same characters express no regret and often full-throated support to growing settler violence in the West Bank. This is ethnic cleaning in intent, plain and simple, and potentially genocidal in effect, regardless of Hamas’s atrocities.

More “reasonable” voices advocate transforming Gaza into Area B-minus. This references the Oslo Accords mandated division of authority in the West Bank into Area A under full PA control, Area B under PA civilian control and Israeli security control, and Area C under full Israeli control.

Even coupled with PA return to Gaza, this policy is deeply ill-conceived. It will not bring Israel the security it seeks; it will not succeed where every other policy Israel has implemented in Gaza has failed. Any Israeli control is a recipe for disaster, as I have already argued at length.

With that, let’s turn to no-go option three, any resolution to this war in which Hamas remains the sovereign authority in Gaza. If the end goal is to actually end the perpetual cycle of violence over Gaza, Hamas rule in Gaza must go, full stop. Here’s why in three acts.

1) Hamas has openly, loudly, and repeatedly sworn itself to Israel’s destruction. Hamas’s invasion, indiscriminate and wanton rape, butchery, and kidnapping of civilians, children, the elderly, Jews and Arabs alike on 7 October was not a one-off spasm of the oppressed throwing off their shackles.

Rather it represents a culmination of decades of Hamas’s ideological positioning, hate mongering, and violence intentionally and gleefully aimed at civilian targets. To quote Ghazi Hamad, the deputy Hamas Prime Minister in his interview on Lebanon’s LBC TV regarding 7 October:

“Israel is a country that has no place on our land. We must remove that country. We are not ashamed to say that with full force… The ‘Al-Aqsa Flood is just the first time, and there will be a second, a third, a fourth because we have the determination, the resolve and the capabilities to fight.”

As long as Hamas controls Gaza, it will continue to attack Israel and provoke devastating Israeli counterattack after counterattack. Such violence, politically advantageous for Hamas, will continue to suck in regional actors into wider military conflicts over the bodies of countless innocents.

2) Hamas rule has been devastating for the people of Gaza. Hamas’s single-minded objective to transform Gaza into a fiercely armed bunker state from which they can continue their violent campaign against Israel’s existence has destroyed the lives and livelihood of Gaza Palestinians.

Whether you blame Israel’s longstanding and counterproductive blockade or Hamas for tearing up Gaza’s already meager infrastructure to build missiles, attack and smuggling tunnels, and bunkers for their soldiers, these processes will only worsen if Hamas remains in power.

Hamas’s half-million liters of reserve diesel fuel, appropriation of what little international aid trickles into Gaza, its leadership’s spectacular self-enrichment at the expense of impoverished Gazans, and violent suppression of peaceful protest are features, not bugs of the Hamas regime.

3) Hamas happily and openly uses civilian infrastructure including UNWRA distribution centers, schools, and hospitals to protect itself from Israeli reprisals. It has long been near-public knowledge that Hamas’s primary command center is located in Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital.

The reasons are transparent. In an interview on 28 November with Russia Today’s Arabic channel, Moussa Abu Marzouk, a prominent member of Hamas’s political bureau, responded as follows to a question about why Hamas has dug 500 kilometers of tunnels in Gaza but not civilian bomb shelters:

“We built the tunnels because we have no other way of protecting ourselves from being killed in airstrikes. We are fighting from inside the tunnels.” He then added, “Seventy-five percent of the population of Gaza are refugees, and it is the UN’s responsibility to protect them.”

So long as Hamas rules Gaza, it will continue to use it as a staging ground for violent attacks against Israel, it will continue to exploit and brutalize its own population, and it will continue to intentionally place them in harms way so civilians, not Hamas, bear Israeli retaliatory violence.

That said, there are at least three arguments against this position. Let’s go from the most specious to the most reasonable. The first comes from those who still believe that Hamas represents a legitimate, principled actor whose “resistance” to Israel demands global support, not condemnation.

This crowd is far from uniform, but rather varies from those who celebrate Hamas’s wanton rape, butchery, and kidnapping of civilians, children, the elderly to those who excuse it as a “natural” response of a “genocided”, occupied, colonized people. To them, I have nothing of value to say.

The second comes from those who argue that Hamas may be a bad actor, but it is the one the Palestinians of Gaza have chosen. If we believe in the rights of peoples to self-determination, then we must also respect those whom they select as their leaders.

This raises the glaring question, did the Palestinians of Gaza in fact “choose” Hamas? Here we must turn back to the last time the Palestinian Authority held elections legislative council elections in January 2006.

While technically winning the majority of seats (74/132), its 44.45% returns were barely greater than Fatah’s 41.43%, netting only 45 seats, due to how seats were apportioned. By this metric, yes Palestinians chose Hamas, but they really also chose Fatah.

A more relevant question is would Gaza Palestinians still choose Hamas? A July 2023 Washington Institute poll of Gazans is revealing: 70% support the PA retaking administrative control and Hamas giving up its separate army. 50% believe Hamas should stop calling for Israel’s destruction and accept 2 states.

Note too that the median age in Gaza is 18, meaning half of Gaza’s population wasn’t even born the last time a democratic Palestinian election was held. It also means 17 yr olds, who missed the opportunity to vote in 2006, are now 34. That’s quite a long time to be disenfranchised.

The third and best objection to Hamas’s removal is that the force required to dislodge or destroy them is so morally and mortally costly that the goal itself is unspeakably immoral. This argument goes beyond the simplistic both-side-isms that have characterized much of the punditry of this war.

It is not merely the assertion that Hamas atrocities cannot justify Israeli atrocities. It also comes from believing that Hamas’s violent removal will do nothing to address and will assuredly amplify the underlying sources of their ideology&violence. As such, Hamas’s removal becomes impossible.

My academic background is in the study of conflict and conflict resolution processes, not in military strategy. I have not and I will not muse on what I feel Israel’s military response in Gaza should look like. As I have commented often and elsewhere, I do not know the answer.

I would suggest that those who vehemently object to Hamas’s removal also have a distinct lack of imagination. The only (lack of) solution they can envision is the military one; complete devastation from the air and ground by the IDF and therefore a moral and practical impossibility.

This same myopia plagues those in Israel who see no option but this selfsame destruction and a return to occupation. In my final thread, I intend to explore some of these underappreciated and underexplored options, and suggest that there actually is a way forward out of this mess.

It is not one that will be embraced by either Israelis or Palestinians as it flatters neither of their sensibilities. However, I will argue how and why it represents the most productive way forward if we actually want to see an end to this brutal conflict.

This post was originally published to Facebook and Bluesky on my personal accounts on 2 November 2023.